


Request: Ballade No. 4

by ClockworkSpades



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M, kind of, musican/writer au, piano playing as flirting, v cute prompt i don't remember the exact phrasing of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 08:43:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15191060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkSpades/pseuds/ClockworkSpades
Summary: Alfred gets a request from his downstairs neighbour, who turns out to be even more handsome than his handwriting.





	Request: Ballade No. 4

**Author's Note:**

> Without sounding like a complete pretentious nerd, I would recommend listening to Chopin's Ballade no. 4, Op 52 if you're not distracted by music. I listened to it on repeat the entire time I was writing this and I'd like to think it adds something to the story if you have them together.

Alfred had enjoyed piano music all his life. He had in fact enjoyed all kinds of music, but nothing quite soothed his soul as those special ballads written just for the piano, the ones that could be done no justice by any other instrument. Those were the ones he loved to play, alone in his flat when he should have been practicing any number of other pieces on any number of the other instruments he was actually being paid to play.

He was a musician. He’d played everything from the accompaniment at ballet recitals to brass below a broadway stage to first chair in a Beethoven concert. He did everything. He didn’t feel he was so good at the wind instruments, but he did enjoy the sound of the trumpet. He could only imagine that his neighbours did not, however. But while he’d on a few occasions received a couple of noise complaints while practicing his brass (despite using a mute), he’d never once gotten anyone knocking on his door to complain about the sound of his piano. His piano that he played beside the open window, all hours and any hours. Well, reasonable hours. But there were those occasional insomniac nights that he needed something to soothe his frayed nerves and nothing else would do. But even then, no one had called in to tell him to stop.

Perhaps it was the variety. Though he had countless things to practice over and over again, he never played the same things in combination. He had concertos and ballads and big musical showstoppers, warmups and modern and variation on a theme, he even did the occasional Disney if he was feeling particularly cinematic that day. He had pages and pages of sheet music, stashed away in books or folders or simply pressed into the gaps on shelves. He had all the music in the world at his fingertips and no complaints from any neighbours who he presumed were either out at work or silently put up with the musical resident of their building.

Until one day.

A simple Wednesday, long after the majority of the building had likely departed for work but still with time before lunch. He’d done his warmups, run through some practises for a show that evening, replaying refrains and sections until he was happy with the end result. He’d barely finished the last note before he heard a knock on his door.

He turned on his stool, frowning in the direction of the noise. He wasn’t expecting anyone, nor did he have a delivery, besides which he would’ve had to buzz someone in to receive. Which meant it had to be one of his neighbours. Perhaps finally they’d had enough of his incessant playing and were serving him a cease and desist notice of some kind.

With a sigh, he got up from his stool, stretching out his back and shoulders as he walked over to the door.

He opened it, but in place of the angry neighbour wishing for quiet that he’d expected, he found a delicately folded note on his doormat. Still frowning, he bent to pick it up, pushing his glasses back up his nose. Opening the note revealed a few simple words, scrawled in an elegant script that was far too fancy for the ballpoint that had been used to write it.

‘  _A humble request; Chopin’s Ballade No. 4, Op. 52.  
– Appreciatively, an avid listener from the flat below. ’_

Alfred looked down the hallway, glancing left and right for any indication of the person who had left the note. There was none, the hallway entirely empty aside from himself. He looked back down at the note, tracing the curves of the writing with his eyes once more as he smiled to himself. A request? Regarding his musical talents such a thing had never happened outside of a gig. But he was more than happy to oblige, especially for someone so mysterious as his downstairs neighbour with such elegant handwriting.

He closed the door behind him, still looking at the note as he wandered back to his piano. He’d played the piece only one time that he remembered, months ago now, which either meant that the requester had either not heard him and deduced from his musical talents that he could play and would know the piece, or that they had heard it, and enjoyed it so much that they’d wished to hear it again. Either thought brought a smile to Alfred’s lips. He grabbed his music, putting aside his show tune folder to place the classical piece on his stand, putting the elegant note right beside it.

Stretching his fingers, and with one careful glance at his window to assure it was open, he began to play.

Alfred didn’t consider himself prideful, not boastful or oversure of himself by any stretch of the imagination, but he did have a certain amount of confidence in his musical talents. The kind of confidence that one required to be a professional musician. The kind of confidence it took to practise music he didn’t know by heart in a thinly-walled apartment complex. The kind of confidence it took to do just that with the window open. He had the right amount of confidence for his abilities, but he knew he played far better with an audience.

In all his time in that flat he’d of course been aware that anyone and everyone could likely hear his playing, especially when it was of show tunes, but that had never really factored in to his playing. It wasn’t a performance. But that day, there was the note. The sudden awareness of a very real listener sitting right there on his music rack who, for all intents and purposes, could very well be sitting directly below him as he played.

For that person, and no one else in the apartment complex, he performed. For the unknown stranger who had taken the trip upstairs, likely where they had never been, just to ask him with the most elegant (legible) handwriting Alfred had ever seen if he would play a certain piece.

He poured his best into playing that ballad, moving with the rises and falls of the music, hanging onto the ends of each refrain for no other reason he could discern for the idle time of ten thirty two on a Wednesday morning than because it had been asked of him.

He held the last note, pressing the damper pedal until it had completely faded.

As it did, the arcs of the music still ringing in his ears, he wondered who exactly it was that had requested the song. He knew nearly everyone in the building, at least those on his floor and closest to the stairs. He knew the family next door to him, and the couple the other side, and the elderly woman upstairs who he helped with her groceries weekly. But he didn’t know who lived below him. Another musician perhaps, with so specific a song in mind, or maybe they just liked classical music. Maybe an elderly couple with a penchant for Chopin, but there was no way someone older could have escaped down the hallway out of sight before he’d answered the door.

While he was musing, the last note long faded, there was another knock on his door.

As before, he turned, frowning for half a moment in confusion. It still could not be a delivery, or a friend dropping by. There was a chance it could be a fed up neighbour asking him to be quiet, but as a smile grew at the corner of his mouth he could only assume that on the other side of the door would be another note, waiting for him to read that elegant writing once again.

He got up, pushing his glasses up his nose once more as he went over to the door.

He opened it, but in place of the delicately folded note on his doormat, he found a handsome gentleman with a small tupperware.

Alfred blinked in confusion, his smile remaining in his usual friendly disposition, but an obvious question clearly in his eyes as the man shifted in what seemed to be embarrassment. He was wearing slacks, a jumper and a button up with both sets of sleeves pushed up to his elbow. His hair was a mess, though it was the kind of mess that was hard to tell if it was intentional or if he’d just woken up like that and hadn’t bothered to do anything about it. He was about a head shorter than Alfred, and despite the polite smile on his lightly freckled features, he was clearly just slightly uncomfortable. Alfred had no idea who he was, but he had to think that it was a pleasant surprise to have such a scruffily adorable man appear on his doorstep.

“Hi.” He greeted after a pause, his eyebrow quirking in slight question.

“Hello.” The man replied, an accent thick even over just one word. English. “I uhm, well I should’ve thought about what to say before I came up here really but uh,” He shifted, fidgeting with the tupperware and Alfred found himself wishing to interrupt just to keep the man from blithering.

“–You wrote the note?” He asked, silently thinking that yes, this knitwear-clad, slightly awkward Brit did fit the handwriting on the note he’d been given.

The man nodded, polite smile touched with awkwardness, but it warmed with the recognition.

“Yes, that was me. I was just going to leave you another note to say thank you, but, well, listening to that piece and the way you played it helped me out a lot more than a simple  _thank you_ , so I wanted to give you a small token.” He held out the tupperware, which Alfred took with a renewed frown of confusion. “It’s a slice of apple pie. I baked it myself or it would’ve been in an unopened container, but I only made it yesterday, so it’s fresh.”

Alfred lifted the tupperware to peer inside, seeing through the dishwasher-whitened plastic what appeared to be a very enticing looking piece of pie. He’d have to do requests more often.

“Well, thank you, uhh…” Alfred grinned, looking back to the man now standing quite comfortably before him.

“Oh, Arthur. Kirkland. I live directly below you.”

“Arthur.” Alfred repeated, nodding and shaking the hand Arthur offered. “I’m Alfred Jones.”

“Nice to put a face to the music I hear every day.” Arthur smiled too, smaller than the polite smile he’d first appeared with, but something far more genuine about it.

Alfred laughed lightly, scratching the back of his head.

“Yeah, I hope it’s not a bother, I have to practise and all.”

“Not at all.” Arthur shook his head, almost cutting Alfred off in his eagerness to protest. “No it, it’s lovely. It’s very helpful, actually.”

“Helpful?” Alfred’s brow furrowed, reminded of Arthur’s first words when he’d appeared on his doorstep.

“Ah,” Arthur’s cheeks coloured (a rather attractive shade of pink, in Alfred’s opinion), “Uhm, I’m a writer. I write better with ambient sound but sitting in cafes was too distracting and my flat was too quiet. But then I moved here and there was you, playing anything and everything all hours. It made it very easy to write. My editor is quite the fan of you and she doesn’t even know you.” He laughed a little. “But well I, I wrote something particularly good several months ago when you played that piece and I’ve been having a bit of a block so I thought it might help to hear it again. I did try just looking up the song, but it didn’t have the same effect. But your playing did! That’s the first bit of writing I’ve done in a while that wasn’t utter rubbish. So, I wanted to say thank you.”

Alfred nodded slowly, his expression softening as Arthur spoke. Partially he did have to think it was the man’s voice itself that made him so eager to listen, soothing and low as it was, but his words had a meaning to them as well. He didn’t know how long Arthur had lived in the building, but to know he’d been listening all that time and in fact found benefit in his practising, that was something else.

“It’s nice to know someone appreciates me making so much noise.”

Arthur laughed again, a light, entertained chuckle that sent butterflies swirling in Alfred’s stomach to hear.

“It is definitely appreciated.”

“Thanks. And you know, you really didn’t have to thank me like this.” He gestured with the tupperware, smiling as Arthur shook his head.

“Nonsense, how else would I have thanked you?”

Alfred’s tongue darted out to wet his lip, a surge of boldness rushing through him as he felt the conversation drawing to a close.

“Dinner? You could tell me all about this book I’m inspiring.”

The last was cheeky, but Arthur’s cheeks coloured again so beautifully Alfred had to think it was worth it. He grinned despite the nervousness that gripped his stomach, grabbing at the butterflies as he watched Arthur splutter for a moment and clasp his hands together.

“I…Well I suppose that could be arranged as well.”

“Great.” Alfred’s grin widened. “I have a show Friday night, how’s Saturday?”

“Sa-” Arthur continued to blush, so endearing in his fluster that Alfred imagined he might well be too distracted over dinner by it to have any meaningful conversation, “Saturday is good.”

“Good. I’ll pick you up at seven. Apartment directly below mine, right?”

“Right.” Arthur nodded, a terse action that was followed with an endearingly awkward smile. “I’ll, uhm, see you on Saturday then?”

“Saturday.” He nodded, and Arthur stepped back with a stiff wave, walking back down the hallway towards the stairs.

Alfred watched him go, wondering already how many other requests he would be getting in the future.


End file.
